To the many Zionists checking out my profile: 

My posts about the Human Rights Catastrophes and Genocides in Gaza, Sudan, Congo and Burma aren’t about you, and you should have zero response to my posts.  I use my freedom of speech to support causes and peoples I know quite a bit about, and, having spent 9 weeks in the West Bank and Israel, I know first hand of the abuses, war crimes and violations against International Law of the nation state of Israel.  

I am not a Zionist, as it is against both my Protestant and Pagan theologies.  I know where the political ideology of Zionism comes from historically, and that it has always been ‘something colonial’ as Theodore Herzl mentioned in his 1902 letter to Cecil Rhodes.  I find Ilan Pappé’s histories to be a fuller explication of Israel’s troubling history of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide than those of Benny Morris who came to very different conclusions, ostensibly with the same data before them.  

As you will see from my work history,  I did Interfaith work formally for 12 years and informally for 20 years and I know the difference between Zionism and Judaism, and I will not be bullied any longer by the JCRC or any other Zionist serving organizations.  I once considered Judaism when I left the faith of my childhood, and I’ve studied under anti-Zionist Rabbis.   

My criticisms of the state of Israel are anti-Zionist and not anti-Jewish, nor anti-Semitic.  I am very careful in the language I use to criticize the ideological foundations for the deadly form of Zionism that today seeks to silence and censor so many.  I never criticize Judaism, but the thought forms that support the dehumanizing of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular.  I find this ideology humanely troubling, strangely supremacist, and I pray and work for the liberation of those who have been indoctrinated into its cult like control.  

One of the other reasons I post as much as I do about this cause, is because the LGBTQIA2S+ community I now serve is at risk from the people control technologies that get tested on Palestinians in Gaza, and the Occupied Territories in the West Bank, Golan Heights, Lebanon and Syria.  The AI and Palentir tools used to track people and restrict their movements is already beginning to be used against our immigrant and Queer communities here.  

Every city that sends their police officers to Israel to be trained in such technology and practices will not make us safer here in the U.S.   Buying up social media outlets that won’t follow your censorship rules (like TicTok) or news media (like CBS) is also troubling as it erodes the Democratic norms of free speech and other constitutional rights that the Trump administration is all too happy to see go away in this season of Authoritarianism.  You do not have to participate in such abuses here to protect a foreign nation state people are fleeing. 

If you are offended by my posts, perhaps you should ask yourself why?  It has more to do with what you’ve been taught than what it is I’m talking about – human rights for all.  

If you plan to use my social media posts to attempt to shame me or block me from posting, prepare to be a party to legal actions against defaming me or attempting to censor my past statements.    

Will McGarvey
Sunday, December 21st
Winter Solstice.